Breaking Habitualised Car Use with a ‘Soft-policy’ Measure? Effects of a Dialogue Marketing Campaign on New Citizens’ Daily Mobility

Everyday car use is a very stable behavior. Car use is affected by infrastructural conditions with a strong tendency of this behavior to become habitual and is viewed as an important reason of its stability. With ‘habit’ a form of automaticity in responding is developed as people repeat actions in stable circumstances with rewarding the consequences. The dependence of habits on stable environmental contexts simultaneously opens an effective way for breaking them: Context changes interrupt the automatically activated association between environmental cues and a specific behavioral pattern. In new contexts people must consciously re-evaluate their action options, which may motivate them for a deeper information processing. Thus in a new context the provision of credible information about alternative action options may have a substantial impact on the formation of action intentions and the actual behavior. However, this strategy probably only works, when people have the expectation that in the new context the performance of an alternative behavioral option leads to better outcomes than the old habit. The intervention should take place as soon as possible after the context change, because context changes create a ‘change sensitive time window’ which closes quickly because of adaptation. These ideas and the assumption that mainly the lack of information and motivation keeps car drivers away from an environment-friendly and sustainable travel mode choice, provide the background of a three-site-intervention study funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs (BMVBS). It was conducted in 2008 in Frankfurt, Munich and Halle. The target group of the intervention were citizens that had recently moved to these three cities. 3600 citizens who moved to Frankfurt, Munich and Halle were provided information about public transport (PT) and/or a service card, to initiate a dialogs marketing process. The study allows a valid estimation whether marketing campaigns have an effect on peoples car use in their new residence.

• Record URL:
  • https://aetransport.org/past-etc-papers/conference-papers-pre-2009/conference-papers-2009
• Corporate Authors:

  Association for European Transport (AET)

  1 Vernon Mews, Vernon Street, West Kensington
  London W14 0RL,    
• Authors:
  • Bamberg, Sebastian
  • Farrokhikhiavi, Reyhaneh
• Conference:
  • European Transport Conference, 2009
  • Location: Leiden Leeuwenhorst Conference Centre , Netherlands
  • Date: 2009-10-5 to 2009-10-7
• Publication Date: 2009

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Bibliography; Figures; Tables;
• Pagination: 11p
• Monograph Title: European Transport Conference, 2009 Proceedings

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Automobile travel; Marketing; Mobility; Public transit; Transit operating agencies; Transportation planning; Travel behavior; Travel patterns
• Uncontrolled Terms: Habits
• Geographic Terms: Germany
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01345854
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jul 29 2011 7:45AM